by Richard DABLAH Email: richard.dablah@gmail.com
Waste in Ghana is not only plastic in the gutter or smoke rising from a burning dumpsite. It is the smell of unkept promises, the visible residue of a state that has long collected money but failed to deliver dignity. From the colonial poll tax of 1852 to today’s Sanitation and Pollution Levy, levies meant to fund public goods have too often collapsed into mistrust. Citizens pay at the pump or at the till, yet the bins still overflow, the rivers still choke, and the drains still reek. Now, as Parliament considers raising the sanitation levy fivefold, the debate is no longer about refuse alone. It is about whether Ghana can break a century-old cycle—turning taxes into trust and waste into a measure of public covenant.
The Long Shadow of Broken Levies
Public suspicion of levies is hardly new. In 1852, the colonial government introduced the Poll Tax Ordinance, ostensibly to finance public services. In practice, it collapsed under corruption, poor record-keeping, and lack of accountability. Ghanaians paid, but saw little benefit. The memory endured: a levy without transparency is a levy without legitimacy.
Independence did not resolve the problem. Ghana has launched more than 130 sanitation-related policies in recent decades, most suffocated by duplication, weak enforcement, or lack of funding. Even the creation of a Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources in 2017 added bureaucracy without coherence, leaving assemblies confused about who truly held responsibility.
The Sanitation and Pollution Levy (SPL), introduced in 2021, was meant to be different. For the first time, a dedicated account was set aside for waste management, insulated from the vagaries of general budgeting. The sums were significant: nearly GH¢471 million in 2023, more than GH¢551 million in 2024. Yet less than 70 percent was actually spent on sanitation. The rest vanished into delay, diversion, or opacity. Once again, a levy collected in good faith failed in delivery.
For citizens, the betrayal is not abstract. The trotro driver who buys fifty litres of fuel a week feels the levy in his pocket, but still drives past overflowing bins. The small trader pays her share at the pump but still pours water past gutters clogged with plastic. This broken circuit of trust is the heart of the sanitation crisis.
A Regressive Burden
Beyond inefficiency, the SPL is regressive. It falls hardest on the working poor, whose livelihoods depend on transport and fuel. A driver spends proportionally more of his income on levies than a middle-class family whose home generates bags of packaged waste. Meanwhile, producers of sachet water and PET bottles—the dominant forms of visible waste—escape significant responsibility.
The imbalance explains why citizens resist the proposed increase from ten to fifty pesewas. A higher levy poured into a leaking system is not reform. It is an injustice.
Lessons From Elsewhere
Other nations have faced similar dilemmas. A glance abroad shows that levies can succeed—but only when fairness, transparency, and enforcement are hardwired into their design.
Rwanda has transformed Kigali into one of Africa’s cleanest capitals. The change came not from cultural tidiness but from state policy. Single-use plastics are banned; deposit-return schemes make producers responsible for retrieval; and municipal enforcement is uncompromising. Over 90 percent of urban waste is collected, because the system obliges producers, households, and government to share the burden.
South Africa combines municipal tariffs with Extended Producer Responsibility regulations. Producers of packaging, electronics, and plastics finance recycling schemes, reducing the strain on households. The model is uneven but instructive: polluters are compelled to pay.
Singapore offers perhaps the most radical case. With little land to spare, it incinerates nearly all waste in state-of-the-art plants that generate electricity. Its success lies not only in technology but in trust: government transparency and rigorous accountability have convinced citizens that the system works.
Together, these examples show that Ghana’s sanitation levy will succeed only if paired with enforcement, producer responsibility, and visible innovation.
What Reform Must Mean
If Parliament insists on raising the SPL, the levy must be reborn—not as another silent tax but as a public covenant. Four reforms are essential.
First, transparency must be immediate and tangible. A live public dashboard should show collections, contractor payments, and project outcomes in real time. If citizens can track electricity units on prepaid meters, they should be able to track sanitation contributions litre by litre.
Second, Ghana must finally establish a National Sanitation Authority with real powers to coordinate ministries, sign performance-based contracts, and publish service metrics. Without a central institution, momentum will always dissipate.
Third, producers must contribute their share. A deposit-return scheme for PET and sachets, matched cedi-for-cedi with consumer levies, would force packaging companies to finance cleanup. Rwanda’s example proves this works.
Fourth, operations must be modernized. Smart bins, GPS-tracked trucks, and data-driven routing can reduce inefficiencies by 25–30 percent. Contractors should be paid not for promises but for verified tonnage and service delivery.
Financing Transformation
Handled well, the SPL could unlock more than routine collection. Its predictability could back green bonds for faecal sludge plants, engineered landfills, and recycling hubs. Universities could be funded to pilot waste-to-energy projects. Climate experts could shape programs that reduce methane emissions and advance Ghana’s environmental commitments.
But citizens deserve safeguards. The levy should carry a sunset clause: if, within two years, clear targets are not met—90 percent collection in metros, 60 percent PET recovery, 80 percent reduction in landfill fires—the increase should expire. Only then will the levy feel like a performance contract, not a blank cheque.
Equity is just as critical. VAT on household sanitation goods—bins, toilets, desludging—should be zero-rated. A “lifeline service” should guarantee basic collection in low-income communities, financed directly from the levy. Property owners and packaging companies must carry greater responsibility, so that commuters are not the only financiers of clean streets.
Citizens as Co-Owners
Sanitation has too often been reduced to official decrees and annual clean-up days. But every Ghanaian is both payer and sufferer. The SPL can succeed only if people are treated as co-owners of the system.
That means communities represented on sanitation boards. Independent audits by universities. Legal standing for civil society to sue over misused funds. Guaranteed media access to spending data. Only with such civic power will the levy escape the fate of its predecessors.
Toward a Covenant
The SPL symbolizes a choice. It can remain a familiar story: a levy collected, politicized, and forgotten. Or it can become an experiment in covenant-building, proof that citizens and the state can together fund and monitor a public good.
History counsels caution. From colonial poll taxes to modern sanitation failures, levies have too often been symbols of betrayal. Yet global experience suggests another path. Rwanda shows that enforcement can yield results. South Africa proves that producers can be held accountable. Singapore demonstrates that waste can be transformed into energy and trust.
Ghana’s future lies in whether it will heed these lessons. Raising the levy without reform will deepen despair. Raising it with reform could transform waste management for a generation.
For in the end, what is decreed may carry the force of law. But only the trust and consent of citizens give it enduring power. In sanitation, as in governance, money alone does not clean streets. Trust does.